5.30h – the sun is coming up at the Slovakia-Hungarian border. What’s the use of getting rid of passport controls if you need to stop at each border to buy a toll vignette anyway? While Ox is inside the never closing truck stop to pay a car stops, the driver justs walks around the building and pisses at the wall… while I can see the toilets inside from here.
The next show is just in the next town, just 30 minutes down the road. There’s a lot of old buildings for such a small city, a monastery, statues from better times. The venue is the bar of a small hotel. But I go to bed first to be ready for the overnight drive. I need to go to Serbia and decided to leave right after the show. But the second band is so loud that I gave up on sleeping and went downstairs.
What I get to experience downstairs is equally depressive, mad and unbelievable. Apparently it was payday in Fulnek and so there were a lot of people whose main goal was to get drunk and have some fun. While the bar is half empty there are half a dozen big drunk Czech guys jumping up and down in front of the stage at any given time. One guy lands on stage, there is blood, the girl singer of the second band is walking around trying to bite people, it almost comes to a fight about it. Some misunderstanding between Frazer Murderburger and the bartender leads to Frazer fearing for his life as the bartender walks up to him rolling up his sleeves. Its bizarr and terrifying but you cannot look away from it. The people like the Dangerfields best that night, but these guys would have danced to everything. Its not hard to pack everything and leave quickly.
We leave at 2.09h. Via Bruenn, Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade. BBBB. There are no problems on the road. Ox is doing hell of a job keeping me awake. Thats the best about overnight driving, there is no traffic, no obstacles, no distractions, no nothing. After five hours Marlon takes over the wheel and I get some hours of rest.
Thursday night. Czech Republic. There are 5 bands on the bill tonight. The friends you are with are playing last. Its 22.30h and still three bands to come… There is actually one guy asking the drummer of each band for a souvenir drum stick… at the end of the night he got five.
The Road from Berlin to Eastern Silesia turns out to be a major obstacle and this is not based on the fact that the Accelerators van is an old Dutch army Ford, camouflage painting included. It is also not the rather boring experience of the Polish country side that shows little beyond forests and fields. Instead the road holes and ruts tell a story of a layer of pavement that has been in use for decades. Well at least they are working on it, the road towards Germany looks new and shiny and probably allows more than the reduced speed the signs allow us to ride.
This isn’t my first time in the Czech Republic, yet quite some time has passed since I went there with school in 12th grade. Not to mention the fact that we went to Prague, which might be not exactly a good representative for the entire country. The GPS is useless as it does not include maps of Eastern Europe – but we get to the venue in time. Its a subterranean rock club, quite nice actually. And it would deliver a really good sound throughout the entire night. The people are nice folks, there is food and beer (and cola). Besides the Accelerators its two local openers, the Murderburgers from Scotland and the Dangerfields from Northern Ireland. Its a good show, highlights include the Murderburgers cover of Be Stag, the prick attitude of Andy from the Dangerfields and girls dancing to the Accelerators at the end of the night.
The rest of the night left me with quite a mixed feeling though. When the Dangerfields wanted to go the apartment I wanted to go with them to get the keys for us to go there later. Sounds like an easy task, right? The next hour consisted of me driving from the venue to the apartment and back no less than three times. One guy got lost walking around in the city until police picked him up and helped him get back to the apartment. And people got food. Eventually I got the keys and the aftershow party continued. I went to bed around 5.a.m. Only to be woken up by the door bell ringing at 7 when the last of the Murderburgers arrived at the place. I got woken up again by the door bell ringing at 9 when somebody living there wanted the Dangerfields to move their van out of the driveway. I finally woke up at 11 to take a shower.